The way the former dictator
General Pervez Musharraf has been allowed to roam freely, retching up his rhetoric, has once again demonstrated the dual standards of justice, accountability, conduct and morality as flaunted, prescribed and actually operated by our superior judiciary, media, mullahs and the kindred icons of the establishment. His arrest decreed by different courts in various cases was precluded by a protective bail granted by the Sindh High Court. The venerable Supreme Court, renowned for its specially swift and severe storms of activism against the elected figures like Syed Yusaf Raza Gilani and Raja Pervez Ashraf, also displayed a rare restraint and magnanimity for the dictator and passed the buck for his accountability to other quarters. Such strange shades of justice have almost always rattled our passions for its inequity. The contrast, for instance, became explicitly evident by an instant drastic action against Waheeda Shah, an MPA-elect from Sindh, for attacking an election agent during the conduct of her official duties as opposed to a continuous indulgence and appeasement in sparing the lawyers who repeatedly assaulted, locked and maltreated several judges and magistrates. Obviously, there seemed to be two separate sets of law for the lawyers and the legislators.
Currently, a far more bewildering blitz of these disparate standards is seen in the use of Articles
62 and 63 of the constitution for evaluating the candidates for the coming elections.These edicts to ensure the Islamicity, honesty, purity and truthfulness of the contestants, ironically were injected by General Zia, the vilest dictator who, besides his other egregious deeds, was universally despised for the breach of his promises to hold the general elections within 90 days of his coup. The general, incidentally, also became the dictator to have eluded any chances of accountability under Article 6 as he was cremated in an air crash. Amazingly, he executed the very architect of Article 6. The fate, impact and operation of Article 6 and 62 and 63 thus became weirdly intertwined in our history and politics.
These Articles, unfortunately, became the instruments of authority to judge the credentials of the representatives of the people in the hands of those who had somehow contrived to evade Article six. Zia, despite being incontrovertibly guilty of defiling the constitution, commanded it to debar the unwanted yet popular democratic activist parliamentariams. His successors and surrogates wielded it till another dictator took over the reins. Even the erstwhile parliament that introduced three wide-ranging amendments, felt so cowed by the power of the pulpit and the pompous ideologues that it left the Articles untouched. In principle, there must be some preconditions for the potential representatives as found in almost every system. But this devious debris of dictatorship naively equates the efficiency, acumen and foresight of the aspirants with religious piety and has been utterly ineffective in ensuring that the representatives are actually competent and conversant with contemporary realites. This is also inherently discriminatory as it judges only the people’s representatives without laying any comparable criteria for the judges, generals and bureaucrats who command far more clout in coercing and crippling these representairives. Pointing out the dichotomy, Aitzaz Ahsan, our enviably illustrious legal light, has rightly stressed that even those evaluating these attributes lamentably lack them. He also revealed how some of the superior judges missed even paying taxes during their law practice and some are thought to have dual citizenship, i.e. the very criterion that the worthy Supreme Court used to roast several representatives.
This dilemma of discrimination drubbing the people and their putative representatives while rewarding a wider and sweeping immunity to patriarchs exalted to evaluate them, unfortunately, undermines the entire essence and the operation of equality, fundamental rights and democratic niceties. This is symptomatic of the psyche and the delusions for the supremacy of some highly idealised self-righteous potentates and a brazen distrust of the masses. It demonstrates that our democratic attitudes are still embryonic, addled and affected by the bouts of dictatorships. This is why pronouncements like ‘merciless, drastic and exemplary accountability of the candidates and inserting tight impermeable filters against them’ made by the superior judiciary, media moguls, the election commission functionaries and the clergy cabals are often so vociferously splashed across the media. They are characteristic of an obsession that some unelected and unaccountable patriarchs have an innate right and authority to judge and select the representatives of the people. Historically, it led to the church-states and dictatorships that repeatedly failed to perform or endure. The mighty conquerors and commanders like Cromwell had to dissolve the parliaments they had so meticulously handpicked. Even General Zia would not trust the consultative conclave (Shura) that he had so painstakingly produced after sifting through his puritan flocks. He similarly became disenchanted with the subsequent parliament that he had so thoroughly disinfected with his mighty magical 62+63 potions.
These cleansing potions could produce yet another stupefying stalemate scenario when some exceptionally honest, pious, law abiding and competent legions of legislatures laundered by them would be stuck against the echelons repeatedly stained with Article 6. Would the tragedies of axing a popularly elected premier, the instant arrest of the other and selective inquisitional spurts against some segments be still reprised? The constitution and the related codes evidently must be corrected to counter these glaring fallacies against fundamental rights and the contradictions to skewer the elected icons and spare the super crust culpable under Article 6. The first imperative for this evidently would be to be more realistic and pragmatic to prune Articles 62 and 63 and to be more vigilant and vibrant about Article 6. The criteria must be confined only to some precisely defined, serious and noncontroversial parameters. The farcical emphasis on examining rudimentary religious knowledge is evidently an insult to the candidates as every Muslim child is mandated to absorb them at school. The count of prayers and rakats similarly varies for some Muslim sects and could certainly spawn some sectarian spins. The penchant for any particular views on the idealogy of Pakistan that nixed the nomination of Ayaz Amir, a quite established columnist, is equally distressing. Enforcing Article 6, on the contrary, is far more imperative and even countries like the United States waged wars to shield their constitutions. The incumbents tainted with this Article, including the highest reigning patriarchs, have to be instantly eased out. The bizarre contradiction to ignore Article 6 and impose the 62+63 as a purifying panacea for the parliamentarians thus has to be ended at the earliest.
The writer is an academic and freelance
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